I switch to btcmine last night when Deepbit was down, but I switched back this morning when I discovered that I had ~155 stale shares after 3700 submitted (4.1%). So far I have 2 stale shares after about 1100 submitted on Deepbit. I use the guiminer.

They buy it for the same reason people bought tulip bulbs - they expect others to value them even higher in the future.

You don't get it. If you have more than 50% of the mining power you can just continue searching for a valid block even after somebody else has found one before you. This way you can make sure that you control every block. This is listed in the weaknesses on the Wiki. Yes, you can technically still add transactions, but there's not much point if they'll never get confirmed.

I have seen several stories about PSUs literally going up in smoke with flames shooting out. You can probably reduce the chance of it happening significantly by using quality PSUs, stay well under the rated wattage, and make sure it's not full of dust. Also don't have anything flammable too close to it.

This is the direct link: http://download2-developer.amd.com/amd/GPU/zip/ADL_SDK_3.0.zip

If so they have become really good at turning them on and off at the same time:
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-2k.png

With more than 50% you can just define every transaction that is not in one of your blocks is invalid, by not validating the blocks found by others. There's no need to double spend or counterfeit.

Sure, as long as you accept any demands they set to have your transfers be included in the official block chain. Blocks that are found by other miners can just be ignored, because they will be voted out eventually.

I, for one, welcome our new miner overlords.

This is the beginning of the end for bitcoins. Those who control the mining control the coins. If you're a big enough fan you'll probably be able to convince yourself that it's still better than normal fiat money, but the average person won't.

Confirmation bias is a wonderful thing.

It works for me using Opera.

You've pretty much answered your own question. There are probably a thousand other aspiring miners in the exact same position. It happens after every large increase in price, and combined with a Slashdot front page it's a disaster for difficulty.

66 out of 18229 = 0.36% at Deepbit atm.

If you were as smart as you think you are it would be really interesting to continue discussing with you. I just had to mention that I checked the variance on BTC Mine for the last 24 hours, and the equivalent number would be about +40%. A bit more than the numbers you'll see on Deepbit...

The goddamn utility bills...

With Deepbit it would very quickly be noticed if it has been compromised, exactly because of the features I appreciate. You on the other hand could not know, because for all you know it could just be a particularly long round. You're really not very good at making up claims about what I would do.

It will be impossible not to.

If you are using a pool you are endangering the network.

Yet another straw man.

Deepbit doesn't really need because of the high hash rate and 1 hr delay. It would probably be just as profitable and much easier to jump between BTCMine and Slush's pool to take advantage of particularly short rounds.

And if you sell your house and sleep on the street you'll save a lot of money too.

If Bitcoin goes down it wouldn't be because my measly hash rate was at Deepbit and not another pool.

I'll deal with the consequences that concerns me. Demanding that I do something I don't want because you are afraid of losing your benefits is what socialists do.

If you don't even understand that the only important factor in lowering variance is total hash rate there's really no point in discussing it with you.

Yeah, I guess I have to be really slow to disagree with your truly brilliant arguments...

Regarding the fee, you have to include what I just call the sucker fee in the smaller pools. It's the income you loose because some people are pool jumping. If you monitor the hash rate, you'll notice that it will go down on in the rounds that last a long time. All in all I'm probably earning about the same as Deepbit as I would in the other pools. If there is a difference it's neglible and one I accept to pay for the convenience.

What kind of socialist argument is that? I should sacrifice getting a regular income to make a neglible impact on the security of the network, just for the greater good?

That would increase the variance, because Deepbit is larger than all the other pools combined. It would also be a lot more work to set up and maintain.

We're talking about the profit, not the hashing. Average payout minus 3% both when the difficulty was 25 000 and when it is 250 000 easily beats bad luck when it was 25 000 and a lucky streak when it is 250 000.

That's not necessarily true. The difficulty is rising so fast now that if you have bad luck in your solo mining early on, you will probably never catch up.

If Tycho was going rogue anyway, all he'd have to do is DDOS Slush and maybe BTC Mine. Then a lot of those users would either be offline or even move to his pool (like last time), making his hashing power well above 50%. It's strange how bad you guys are at coming up disaster scenarios for bitcoins, considering how you excel at it for fiat currency.